Hello

Cool duck eh? He ventured up to my trainers with the lure of half a roll last weekend in Tekapo. Good weekend except for the massive cloud that arrived before our stargazing trip - we have no luck with stargazing trips, the last time we booked on one was in San Pedro in the Atacama desert where they have no rain ever - ecept for the day we were there and the biggest cloud ever arrived. Don't ever book on a trip with us!! Hope you all liked the photos from that weekend, the light around Tekapo was just fab on the Sunday morning hence the blue photos. It's so lovely living so close to these kinds of places - we're about 4 and a half hours from Queenstown and we're now planning a long weekend there at the end of September to concide with a bank holiday. We're looking at staying at a place called Glenorchy which is a little further northwest of Queenstown and the start of some of the NZ great walks. If anyone can recall the 100% pure NZ adverts in magazines etc where there are people running through a lake with mountains in the backgroud- this is Diamond Lake which is around Glenorchy in a place called Paradise. It's taken a while to locate this lake so now we've found it we thought we'd have a weekend there and enjoy it properly!

Last week I spoke at the South Canterbury Chamber of Commerce 'business after 5' meeting, there were about 100 people and there was a screen with my name on and a proper lectern and micophone and all that...eek. I survived which was good, and had some good chats with local business bods which is all good. The point of my being there was to talk about canstaff from the point of view of a migrant who had been helped by them.

I have been in close contact with Ali this last week as the table tennis Germany exchange has been going on. An exciting week of events including 2 adventurous trips across to Birmingham (for Cadburys world and the Space Centre) have reminded me of how little traffic there is here!! I am pleased to report a win in both the table tennis and the football (sorry Thomas, Birgit, Malte and Yvonne!). I believe Daniel's absence may have helped this? Glad you had a good week guys.

Last night we went to the Theatre Royal to see the South Canterbury drama league production of Chicago- surprisingly good.

As Rich is now back from the gym, i'd better crack on with our sunday morning fryup. Haven't got loads more to say for now. No more news on the residency which is very frustrating. Our lawyer suggests we don't start chasing immigration up for another 6 weeks!!!!! Not happy about that but there you go.

Keep your emails coming and give us a ring if you find yourself awake in the middle of the night. Oh and anyone who has a seat in the city stand or barclay end or who listens to Roy Wally, and name ends in Wickham, Burns, Cockburn, Canwell, King or Todd then i will be expecting regular reports as of next Saturday :-)

Deb and Rich xx